Recently I found out (no idea why) that on win2k/citrix the values that a CMD box give are not active after an
MSI installation, a logoff was really needed although nothing was changed in the registry.

ORIGINAL: sk
Recently I found out (no idea why) that on win2k/citrix the values that a CMD box give are not active after an
MSI installation, a logoff was really needed although nothing was changed in the registry. That's because of what I have recently dubbed The Circle Of Life: Lazy ==> Microsoft Developers ==> Lazy.

When a change is made to the System path, the WI engine fails to send the relevant message to the rest of the system (unlike when you add it manually via Control Panel). That is the reason why I almost *never* use System variables but User ones: they are propogated immediately.

Note also that the script shown fails to check whether the entry being made already exists. How many times have I seen folder names repeated over and over in a PATH statement? Lots, mostly (strangely enough) at the hands of IBM software installs. Once you add that code to the script, don't iorget that you should also add handling for the short path name, too, in case that was used.